Future energy development faces great challenges due to an increasing world population, demands for higher standards of living, a need for less pollution, a need to avert global warming, and a need for less reliance on fossil fuels. Because reliance on traditional sources of energy and energy generation relies in large part on unrenewable fossil fuels, and because it is believed that reliance on fossil fuels cannot adequately meet future energy needs, the need for reliance on renewable energy sources and the development of renewable energy sources are vitally important to ensure future energy needs can be satisfied.
Most automobiles in use today are propelled by gasoline or diesel internal combustion engines, which are known to cause air pollution and contribute to climate change and global warming. Increasing costs of oil-based fuels and increasingly rigorous environmental laws and restrictions on greenhouse gas emissions are influencing efforts toward development of alternative power systems for automobiles including hybrid vehicles, hydrogen vehicles, and electric power vehicles.
Hybrid vehicles most commonly incorporate internal combustion engines and electric batteries to power electric motors. Hydrogen vehicles utilize hydrogen as the primary source of power for locomotion. Hydrogen vehicles generally use hydrogen through combustion or fuel cell conversion. In combustion, the hydrogen is essentially burned in engines in fundamentally the same way as traditional gasoline engines. In fuel-cell conversion, the hydrogen is reacted with oxygen to produce water and electricity used to power electric motors.
The first electric vehicles were built in the late 1800s. However, the building of battery-powered vehicles that could rival internal combustion models came about only through the advent of modern semiconductor controls. Because electric vehicles can deliver high torque at lower revolutions, electric vehicles do not require the complex drive trains and transmissions required by vehicles powered by internal combustion engines.
Regardless of the type of alternative power system employed for automobiles, most utilize batteries to provide either backup or primary power for driving electric motors for providing either a secondary or a primary means of facilitating propulsion. As a result, in alternative vehicles that utilize batteries for providing electrical power to drive electric motors, the batteries must be periodically recharged. However, recharging requirements normally result in long periods of down or recharging time. Although numerous efforts have been made toward the development of onboard electric power generators that operate to generate electrical power to recharge onboard batteries during operation, existing onboard electric power generators are expensive, complicated to build, and inefficient. These and other shortcomings must be overcome if a viable alternative to conventional internal combustion engines can be successfully implemented.